Sylvia sat at the dinner table conditioning her boots, the open tin of mink oil sitting beside a towel and a tin of neutral polish. Dakota was splayed out on the couch, scrolling some app or another to kill time before the lasagna in the oven was ready to eat. As she dipped her fingers back into the mink oil and began to apply the new scoop of oil to her boot, Sylvia decided to allow muscle memory to take over the conditioning for a minute.

 

“Hey, um, Dakota? Can I ask you something?”

 

Dakota lowered her phone to rest on her stomach as she fired off her reply almost unconsciously. “Of course you can, babe.”

 

“You said the other day that you don’t think of yourself as a woman anymore, just feminine. What exactly does that mean?”

 

Dakota grabbed her phone with her hand and sat up, leaning into the cushions as she thought of how to answer the question. “It means that I think of myself as a feminine being. I like doing things traditionally associated with women like dresses and make-up. I don’t mind being grouped in with women for convenience or being thought of as others as one, I just don’t think of myself as one because it has too much baggage for me. Too many impossible standards and dumb restrictions. So, I just noped out of the category.”

 

Sylvia’s hands moved on to the tongue of the boot as her brain raced with a thousand different thoughts. “So, is that your gender then? Just ‘feminine’?”

 

Dakota slowly rocked her head in thought. “I mean, I guess so, yeah. It’s not an inaccurate description. The best description of my gender is probably ‘the F on my license is close enough’ to be honest. People see me as a woman and treat me like one, so I’m basically a woman for all intents and purposes besides my own internal processes.”

 

Sylvia set the boot aside and wiped her fingers off on the towel as she waited for the oil to soak into the leather. Her now free hands sat on top of the table, her index fingers slowly tracing circles just to have something to do. “Did you, um, ever consider different pronouns?”

 

Dakota turned her head to look at Sylvia as she carefully considered her next words in order to prevent Sylvia from shutting down. “When I first came out, I did. I used to use they/them, but I never felt great when someone used those for me. It didn’t feel wrong like he/him did, but it wasn’t like a shot of euphoria or anything. Honestly, I’m still fine with other trans people using they/them for me since I know that they respect my identity. Cis people are she/her only though, I don’t trust cissies as far as I can spit.”

 

Sylvia nodded. “I definitely get that. It’s like, conditional pronouns? I guess that would be the term. Like, ‘if they’re not cis, then you have they/them permission’. Would you mind if I, maybe, tried out something like that for myself?’

 

“Of course not, honey. What are you wanting to try out?”

 

“See, that's the problem. I want something close to she/her because I want to be close to traditional womanhood, but I also want it to be more than a simple letter swap that doesn’t change the pronunciation.”

 

Dakota slipped her phone into her pocket as she stood up and stretched. As she spoke, she started to walk towards the kitchen. “Yeah, that’s a difficult order to be sure.” She opened the cabinet and pulled out a cup before she continued. “I mean, you’re definitely entering into neopronoun territory. Have you looked any of those up?” Sylvia nodded as she put the cup under the kitchen sink and ran the tap for a few seconds before turning it back off and walking over to the table. She pointed at the table to ask for permission to sit down and Sylvia quickly nodded that permission. The chair scraped ever so slightly as Dakota pulled it out and sat down, setting her cup down on the table.

 

Sylvia let out a small apprehensive sigh before she spoke. “The thing is that I’ve found pronouns I like, but I don’t know if I want to admit how I found them. It’s kinda embarrassing.”

 

Dakota stopped the circling of Sylvia’s index fingers with her own and started rubbing her thumbs over the back of Sylvia’s hands. “I promise you, I won’t make fun of you or laugh or do anything but be respectful no matter how you found these pronouns.”

 

Sylvia swallowed nervously. “I stole them from a book. Stone Butch Blues. I finally finished it. In the back of the anniversary edition, there’s this little blurb about pronoun usage that links to a couple of other pages. There’s, what’s basically a throwaway pronoun, you know, just not one of the usual three to show respect and acknowledge to all the rest that exist. But that little throwaway pronoun is just stuck in my mind and refuses to leave.”

 

Dakota nodded at Sylvia. “What is it?”

 

“Ze/hir. It fits all of my criteria. It’s definitely feminine adjacent, at least to me, and it definitely isn’t just a letter swap. I like how it sounds and I like thinking of myself with it.”

 

“I sense a but coming.”

 

“It’s just that if I admit that there’s pronouns I’d rather use than the feminine standard, then there’s no reason why I shouldn’t admit the same about the rest of my identity.”

 

“You’re right, there is no good reason for that at all.” Dakota took Sylvia’s hands in her own and gave them a comforting squeeze before she continued. “Sylvia, I promise you that I will love you no matter what words you use for yourself and will support anything that makes you happier and feel better.”

 

Sylvia’s voice slightly cracked, making hir sound like ze was on the verge of tears. “Can my gender just be ‘trans butch with an implied woman’? Because that’s the best that I’ve come up with so far. I can’t bring myself to fully just cut off the woman and I can’t modify it enough to have it be comfortable and a prominent part of my identity. So, I shifted it to just being implied and that did the trick while simultaneously raising even more questions. Like, do I even have a claim to womanhood if the most acknowledgement I can give it is an implied status?”

 

Dakota leaned in towards Sylvia to make sure ze was looking her in the eyes. “Hey, implied womanhood is still womanhood if that’s what you want. It’s just a less restrictive and less defined version of it. Womanhood is just what we make of it after all. And yes, that can be your gender if that’s what feels best to you.”

 

Sylvia nodded, blinking away tears. “I guess that’s me then.”

 

“Do you feel better when you think of yourself as a trans butch? With an implied woman?”

 

“I feel freer to do what I want. Sure, a trans woman might have long hair, but a butch doesn’t. Same for everything. Especially packing. That doesn’t feel like the absolute biggest betrayal possible of the community when I think of myself the new way. It’d just be something I do to feel comfortable.”

 

“Sounds like to me this is a perfect fit then.”

 

Sylvia scoffed. “It oughta be, as much pain as it caused me! I’m tired of settling for off the cuff. I wanted a tailored gender, so I got one. With some help.” Ze squeezed Dakota’s hands back and gave her the best smile she could manage.

 

Dakota squeezed and smiled back. “Happy to help, babe. I’m just glad you let me help you. I know how hard that is for you.”

 

“Can I ask you something else?” Dakota nodded. “Did you know this would happen when I tried on that suit?”

 

Dakota shook her head. “No, not in the slightest. I knew that you didn’t like being called feminine coded compliments from watching you wince every time I used one, but I never figured it would cause a gender crisis. To be honest, I just thought it was dysphoria telling you that you didn’t deserve them or something. I never imagined that they were causing an entirely different dysphoria. I’m just sorry I never thought to ask about it all sooner.”

 

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I probably couldn’t have even realized it was dysphoria without you. I couldn’t have dealt with any of this without you. I really don’t know what I did to deserve you.”

 

“The same thing I did to deserve having your wonderful self in my life: existing.”

 

The couple smiled at each other for a long moment before Sylvia returned to hir boots, now dry enough to begin polishing, and Dakota returned to her phone occasionally showing Sylvia a meme she came across in her scrolling.